Wanted: simple mailer for laptop use

[Eric S. Johansson]

Robert Stoffers wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-12-05 at 00:51 -0500, 'Forum Post wrote:
>> After a fairly large amount of effort (mostly trying to find
>> instructions, and then getting the motivation to carry them out and
>> pick out what was relavent) I have an imap set up on my home LAN
>> getting pop3 from my remote webserver. I need to write down exactly
>> what I did in case I need to do it all again, and to help out anyone
>> who might be interested in doing the same thing. 

>> I think as time goes on and more people have home networks this will
>> become more sought after.

> I remember a piece of advice I once heard, it went something along the
> lines of:
> 
> "there is no need to run your own mail server for home use, open relays
> are bad mmmkay?"
> 
> There's a number of reasons for this, but accidentally running an open
> relay mail server due to some configuration error would be the biggest
> problem. Besides that, Gmail and others already to a great job, have
> free pop3 access and are available wherever you have an Internet
> connection.  Why not just use these free services instead? If your only
> doing it so you can filter spam, use SpamAssassin with Evolution as an
> alternative (see http://krath.dk/linux/evolution_spamfilter/ for more
> info). 

why aren't mail systems like answering machines?  The argument for 
having your own mail server is that you are not subject to somebody 
else's terms of service.  is there an artificial distinction between 
business and nonbusiness use?  How much does it cost to have e-mail for 
your own domain?  How much do you value being ISP independent?  What if 
there's no way to put the services you want in place (i.e. own 
customized spam filters, darcs destination).

Yes, open relays are a problem.  But with an answering machine like a 
model, it wouldn't happen.  The mail server setup would ask what's its 
domain (or domains), how many e-mail addresses (and what are they), and 
if it should use a smart relay.

That's it.  That's about all a mail server needs to know.

yes, if someone tinkers under the hood, they are well and truly hosed. 
But that's okay because the vast majority of the users would just have 
that e-mail answering machine running without any problems.

remember, it's all in the user interface.  Make it simple, make it a 
predictable model and the vast majority of the users will choose that 
solution.  Those who don't, well we know who they are.  ;-)

---eric